Nope. Instead of those things, a group of concerned Vermonters calling themselves “Vermonters for a New Economy” have decided that the primary answer to the problems above is a bank.

Yep. A bank. But not just any bank. A state bank. Meaning a bank that is funded, and backed, to one degree or another by public funds (the funding issue is just another one of those thorny details that no one really needs to think about, just yet). Which means, of course, that any risk or liability falls directly upon the shoulders and wallets of those who pay taxes.

And what is their mission statement? Their raison d’etre? Here it is:

Vermonters for a New Economy is a coalition of organizations, businesses, and individuals working to create a new economy for Vermont. You can work with us to design and enjoy the new ways we are owning and operating businesses, banking, exchanging goods and services, financing projects, and earning income. This work enables us to pursue regenerative economic activities that strengthen our food systems, build renewable energy, reuse and recycle byproducts, and foster creativity, culture, and healthy lifestyles.

I must have missed Banking 101, but I’m pretty sure the bank didn’t ask me about my healthy lifestyle choices when I applied for a mortgage. They wanted some details around income, liabilities, etc., because they’re crazy like that. But no mention of how their capital would foster my creativity. Which is mildly disappointing. It’s also fantastic that they’re allowing Vermonters to work with these New Economists as to how Vermonters earn their own incomes.

That’s generous of them.

But let’s let the New Economy Vermonters provide more of their own detail, in terms of why they think we need a state bank:

Our Planet — a VT state bank can provide the game-changing, long-term, low-interest financing that will power a transition to a just and sustainable future

Students — to access low interest education loans.

Homeowners — to get mortgages and home loans from the bank.

Entrepreneurs — who need credit lines, loans, and other forms of finance to help their businesses succeed.

Municipalities – the bank can offer competitive interest on public deposits and lower cost financing for public works.

Taxpayers — who will benefit from both the profits the bank makes and the services the bank offers

Well, that’s quite a bit to digest, so let’s take it one at a time:

1. Our Planet — a VT state bank can provide the game-changing, long-term, low-interest financing that will power a transition to a just and sustainable future.

The planet. So the planet needs a Bank? How did the planet exist, then, before humans evolved? Did Gaia patiently wait for first humans to evolve, then banking, in order to provide a high enough state of enlightenment before asking for funding? Gaia’s patience here with us is considerable.

So the federal government can’t do it, with virtually limitless resources, but Vermont can, now, because of one bank?

In fact, VSAC has said it’s “agnostic” on the idea of a state bank. So why list student loans as a justification, when the one institution that has historically provided student loans doesn’t see the need?

When the CEO of VSAC says they don’t need additional access to capital, maybe you should remove that selling point from your website.

3. Homeowners — to get mortgages and home loans from the bank.

You can already get loans from banks, easily – they’ll happily lend you money for a house, or equity loans. It’s how they make money. For FHA loans, you only need 3.5% down. Rates for fixed 30-year FHA loans are well under 4%. Do Vermonters not know how to apply for a loan, and the state bank will save them from their own ignorance?

And why the incentive to increase – via public funds – the number of mortgage lenders, increasing competition, when, in many cases, the same people who tout this state bank (like Bernie Sanders) want to decrease competition in other markets, like health care? Why is it a good thing to increase competition in one place, but not the other?

4. Entrepreneurs — who need credit lines, loans, and other forms of finance to help their businesses succeed.

They can get this already from existing banks and investors. What would a state bank provide that does not already exist? Other than offering riskier loans that will be backed by taxpayers? There’s a federal Small Business Administration that offers many channels for funding. What would this bank offer that’s not already available?

5. Municipalities – the bank can offer competitive interest on public deposits and lower cost financing for public works.

Municipalities already have access to funding through banks and bonds. Like the Vermont Municipal Bond Bank, which has been in place since 1970. If municipalities already have access to low-interest funding source, why do they need another one?

6. Taxpayers — who will benefit from both the profits the bank makes and the services the bank offers.

You mean like the benefits current federal taxpayers enjoy, like $20 trillion in debt? The profit the bank makes is the interest on the loan, which, for the federal government, increases as a percentage of total spending, and if the rates increase, even a little bit, will start to crowd out all other discretionary spending.

Which is really the heart of the matter. The supporters of the state bank are looking for a way to finance spending now that someone else will have to pay for later. It’s like giving a college student a credit card with no limit. Sooner or later that bill will come due, and the people who want to create and support that state bank will then be asking taxpayers to bail it out, just like some other large financial institutions, like Freddie and Fannie. Which have become, more or less, nationalized.

But the worst of the justifications for the proposed bank’s existence are in its own supporting documents, which make a few claims of fact that aren’t supported by reality. A few examples (page 6):

Assumptions made reality by simply writing them down.

Sub-prime mortgages are what Fannie and Freddie specialized in, and still continue to be the largest generators of these types of loans in the industry. Taxpayers had to bail out their poor business practices and the fact that they were understating their sub-prime exposure; there is nothing in the call for a state bank that would prevent this from recurring.

Secondly, citing Vermont’s low unemployment rate as evidence of economic stability means they either a) willfully ignore the reality of Vermont’s declining workforce participation rate, or b) don’t understand what they’re talking about. If they’re using this conclusion (below) as one of the underpinnings of the justification for the need for a state bank, they’re making a significant error:

Well, it does when we argue that the state’s economy is in great shape based on unemployment data. Then it’s ok to make that correlation argument.

If anything, the state’s demographics and the general leveling off of already-high housing prices won’t require a state bank to support increased demand for mortgages. In fact, the reason housing prices are (relatively) level is because demand isn’t increasing. There are simply fewer Vermonters looking to buy homes:

Vermont’s economy, and its housing market, are clearly not divorced from national trends. But our housing market seems to be under performing the national housing market, which is worrisome. Over the last two years, Vermont’s housing market, at least measured by prices, has gone nowhere. Nationally, prices are up 7 percent over the same period—not great, but at least it’s a positive number.

One of the reasons for our weak housing market is our underlying demographics. First-time home buyers tend to be in their 30s and early 40s. That’s precisely the demographic that’s shrinking in Vermont. And if there are fewer first-time home buyers, people trying to sell their houses and trade up to more expensive homes can’t find buyers. That clogs up both sides of the home-buying and home-selling market, limiting both sales and price appreciation.

The New Economy site also encourages readers to read the study that justifies the new state bank. Hilariously, the study recommends that the state not implement a state bank. That the capital needs are already met. That the current options available for financing are just fine. From page 3:

So…we *don’t* need a state bank, then? Oopsy!

Then what is the purpose of the New Economy site? To ignore the realities of Vermont’s business climate, Vermonters’ incomes, the demographic changes, and historical policy overhangs that make the state a lousy place to do business? Another bank won’t fix that. Another bank can’t fix that.

Only Vermonters can fix Vermont, by dismantling the policies and governmental apparatus that have put them in the place they are today. If that’s part of the New Vermont Economy, then maybe things will start to change.

Vermont is currently enjoying one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the country. Enjoying. Yes, like most things in Vermont,

An economy so strong you can’t stop it, you can only hope to contain it.

“enjoying” comes with a bit of a caveat. If by enjoying you mean “having a low unemployment rate with one of the weakest state economies in the country”, then yes, there is much to be enjoyed.

Yet even in the state’s own monthly statement on the labor market (November 2016), there seems to be some signs of reality slipping in. Those signs only appear after the preamble, of course, because low unemployment is automatically great news for Vermonters:

The Vermont Department of Labor announced today that the seasonally-adjusted statewide unemployment rate for November was 3.2 percent. This reflects a decrease of one-tenth of one percentage point from the revised October rate (3.3 percent). The national rate in November was 4.6 percent. As of the prior month’s initial data, the Burlington-South Burlington Metropolitan NECTA was tied for the sixth lowest unemployment rate in the country for all metropolitan areas at 2.2 percent (not-seasonally-adjusted). Overall, Vermont’s unemployment rate was also tied for sixth lowest in the country for the same time period.

That must mean thousands of people are moving to Vermont to enjoy its robust economy and vast repositories of high-paying jobs just waiting to be filled by eager workers, right? Right?

No. The number is just a reflection of the declining size of Vermont’s labor force, not the number of unemployed. In fact, the state’s lowest unemployment rate for the year was 3.1%, back in May 2016.

While the unemployment rate barely changed between May and November, the labor force shrunk by 1,200 people, and the total number of employed shrunk by 1,300 people, which results in a total unemployed number that’s barely changed. Yet there are 1,300 fewer people employed between the state’s lowest unemployment rate month (May 2016) and last month (November 2016).

Telling Vermonters in a press release that Vermont’s unemployment rate is tied for sixth-lowest in the country is so meaningless (absent any context), it’s almost deceptive. But the November press release goes on:

“The Vermont economy is more stable than the month-to-month data might suggest, as increases and declines are “ironed out” at the

Welcome to Vermont!

conclusion of the year. What we can see is a slower rate of job gains this year than in recent years. Yet, with Vermont’s low unemployment rate, it’s still a tight labor market with recruitment and retention challenges for our employers; and a limited availability of workers can adversely impact economic expansion and growth.

Yes, it’s always going to be a tight labor market when the labor force is shrinking annually, and has been since its 40-year peak in April, 2009, at 361,200 Vermonters in the labor force. In November, 2016, that number is 344,750. That’s 16,000 fewer workers in the labor force in 7 years. Vermont is featuring an annual worker reduction of more than 2,000 workers per year.

A couple of numbers from the state’s historical labor data that never seem to make it into the state’s semi-rosy press releases:

The average monthly number of workers in the labor force for 2016 is 345,000. In 2006, this average is just shy of 357,000. A reduction of 12,000 workers in the labor force.

The average monthly number of people employed in the labor force for 2016 is 334,000. In 2006, this average is just shy of 344,000. A reduction of 10,000 employed workers.

In fact, taking a look at a few of the lowest employment months in 2016, and comparing them to the historical high numbers in 3 cateogories – Labor Force, Employment, and Unemployment – and then compare them to the 2009 numbers, a certain trend becomes clear:

Vermont’s number of employed is relatively the same for the past 10 years.

Vermont’s labor force is shrinking dramatically, at a rate higher than the decline of unemployed – which creates a decreasing unemployment rate. This decreasing unemployment rate masks the fact that there is little to no job growth in the state for the last 10 years.

The historical context is…painful.

But the state’s conclusion as to how to address this issue, the fix, is a howler that has to be read at least twice to understand the depth of the disconnect:

Vermont needs to effectively utilize every state and federal job-training dollar to get people into jobs, and we need to address issues that will help Vermont be more successful: promoting gender equity, workplace civility, bringing under-represented populations into the workforce, creating job training programs that guarantee employment at the conclusion, and resolving the “benefit cliff” so that anyone who wants to work can do so without suffering adverse economic impacts.

Oh, so that’s all it takes! Gender equity will create high-paying manufacturing, technical, and financial jobs for all inequitably-gendered Vermonters to enjoy! I’d gasp with pride but I’m too busy gasping in astonishment.

Let’s look at that State of Vermont sanctioned checklist to fix the economy a bit more closely:

Gender equity (I’m assuming this reflects how much you have invested in the value of your house based on gender?)

Workplace civility (remember, you have to have a job first before the workplace’s civility can be measured by the Vermont State Civility Department)

Create job training programs (because decades of job training programs have resulted in the numbers above, so let’s double-down on that approach).

Resolve the benefit cliff (this from the state that tried to institute single-payer, a system that has failed in Vermont as well as nationally, and has created people taking more part-time jobs because Obamacare’s incentives are upside-down).

Here’s what’s not mentioned in the press release, so I offer these up as suggestions to the State of Vermont, if they’re not too busy creating gender civility or the like:

Stop electing governors who promise something for free but winds up costing $200 million to “cover” only a small fraction of Vermonters who were uninsured, but qualified for insurance of some kind regardless of Peter Shumlin’s flailing attempts at implementing single-payer, and, well, you’d get more businesses interested in investing and expanding in Vermont when they know their costs won’t swing on the whims of state politicians interested in national offices. Like in DC. (Ahem).

Stop electing governors who usurp the authority of the state’s Public Service Board (which is supposed to represent the peoples’ interest, not the governor’s) and shutter the cheapest and most reliable electricity in the state’s history – Vermont Yankee.

Stop electing governors who tout new ‘clean-energy’ jobs as part of the state’s job-growth numbers, while happily ignoring the fact that federal subsidies – funded by taxpayers – pay for the bulk of those new ‘jobs’.

That said, the first step for any corrective action is up to Vermonters, who, at least in the last election cycle, seemed to have grasped what works, and what does not work. It’s time for the State of Vermont to catch up to its citizens.

The Vermont Department of Labor announced today that the seasonally-adjusted statewide unemployment rate for August was 3.3 percent. This represents an increase of one-tenth of one percentage point from the revised July rate (3.2 percent). The national rate in August was 4.9 percent. As of the prior month’s initial data, the Burlington-South Burlington Metropolitan NECTA was tied for the seventh lowest unemployment rate in the country for all metropolitan areas at 2.9 percent (not-seasonally-adjusted). Overall, Vermont’s unemployment rate was fifth lowest in the country for the same time period.

The bolded section is the good news the state’s trying to slather over the dismal economic record of Peter Shumlin, and the Progressive bloc in general. Because even though Vermont’s unemployment rate is low, that doesn’t mean Vermont’s economy is doing well. Unemployment could be at zero, if every employable Vermonter was working for $10/hour selling lift tickets to tourists, but that’s not the Vermont we’re looking for, is it?

Unfortunately, that’s the Vermont you’re getting. Even the state’s own out-year employment projections, short-term, says that out of the top 15 job types the state sees demand for, only 3 of them would require a Bachelor’s degree as a condition of employment.

That’s encouraging.

So why would the Department of Labor continue with its rosy monthly unemployment summaries, making comparisons to national and other KPIs to show that Vermont has a lower rate of unemployment than other places? Why would it go out of its way not to provide a historical Vermont context for the overall employment picture?

It’s a simple answer, really. If the DoL did show the data and speak to it openly, it would look bad for the current and prior administrations. It might, finally, force the state to change its Progressive agenda to something that oh, I don’t know, create a job other than a cashier at an EB5-funded ski resort.

If you look at the averages, the labor force in 2010 was larger by 14,000 people. Yet the average number of employed Vermonters in 2010 was 337,000; in 2016 it was 333,000, a difference of 4,000 Vermonters. The unemployed number has been cut in half, by about 10,000.

So although the number of unemployed has shrunk by 10,000 or so, we now have:

A smaller workforce.

Even fewer people employed.

A lower unemployment rate! The economy must be booming!

These numbers alone show a significant negative trend that no amount of mediocre

Hey, at least it’s not economics.

word-smithing by the Department of Labor can paper over. That the state doesn’t advertise these numbers is because it demonstrates a massive failure of public policy, that the policies espoused by Shumlin, Shap Smith, et al, have been and continue to be the harbingers of the slow economic death experienced by Vermonters, every day.

For the dwindling number of Vermonters still living there, that is. There is a choice. What’s hard to accept is that for Vermonters to thrive, to live in their own homes, and raise their families, maybe the state they grew up in is no longer home.

The Department of Public “Service”, that same wonderful entity that helped bring about the shuttering of Vermont Yankee, which had the happy result of increasing electrical costs and dependency upon non-locally-generated power, now suggests, strongly, that Vermonters start moving into caves:

Giving up some rural landscapes for solar arrays, sharing cars and driving less, and generally using less cheap oil and gas are all in order if the state has any hope of achieving 90 percent renewable energy usage by 2050.

This was the message of the DPS at a public forum held at the Vermont College of Fine Arts on Tuesday morning. Included in the crowd of about 100 were some state legislators and energy professionals.

The forum allowed the public to provide input on the standards the DPS must create per Act 174 of 2016 for ensuring consistency of regional and municipal plans with state energy policy.

In other words, like with schools, you can create your own policy, as long as it conforms to what the state is going to tell you to do anyway.

Director of the Planning and Energy Resources Division of the DPS Asa Hopkins led much of the initial presentation. He said that eventually communities should create maps that overlay what he categorized as primary and secondary constraints for alternative energy development.

Oooh! Maps! To where the buried energy treasure lies? Oh, no, wait. Not the fun kind of maps. He means anything (more or less) found outside:

So, in other words, you’re required to make renewables part of regional energy planning but you can only do so within the state’s proscribed box o’ places to site said energy sources, like solar, else the sky falls in and bad things will happen. In the form of penalties.

Hopkins suggested a shift from oil and gas to renewables would mean, from an economic perspective, a shift away from operating costs (primarily fuel) into capital costs (infrastructure). He suggested the overall aggregate of energy costs should stay relatively the same, give or take about 5 percent.

Funny, that’s as much as the electric rates for Vermont Yankee went up (5%) when the Vermont legislature decided that it could decide whether or not Vermont Yankee could continue to operate, because as every Vermonter knows, all legislators are highly experienced energy professionals with decades of knowledge to back up their decision-making:

Vermont’s three largest utilities use about one million more MW/H of “system power” now than in 2011 (before the March 2012 expiration of Vermont’s utilities’ contract with Vermont Yankee which provided about one-third of the state’s power). System power is the term for electricity bought from the New England transmission grid, and is comprised mostly of fossil fuel power (especially natural gas), as well as some nuclear, hydro and renewable power. Green Mountain Power, Burlington Electric Dept., and Vermont Electric Coop use 1.8 million megawatt hours of “system power.” In 2011 the same three utilities used 847,000 Mw/h of system power, according to the “Utility Facts” study released in February, 2013 by the Vermont Department of Public Service.

Over the 12 months from December 2011 to December 2012, Vermont’s electricity prices rose 5.1 percent, according to the EIA. During the same time period, rates in New York and every other New England state (except Rhode Island) decreased.

In the same way that Vermonters are being told that they will a) adhere to the state’s incalculably stupid energy policy (which is really just a

The latest in Vermont’s new hi-tech homesteads! No power required!

vehicle for politicians to use to get elected), they’re also told that b) it really will only cost 5% more.

Just like when Vermonters were told their health care insurance costs wouldn’t go up much (in fact, they were told it would go down), it would be easier to enroll, and they would have more choices. In that regard, it’s not so much as accepting the lie itself that the state is telling you, it’s that you get to choose which lie you want to believe in. That’s classical market thinking, Progressive-style.

Not mentioned by the state’s Progressive Peoples’ Brigade are the hard and unyielding economic realities of cost: When the cost of something goes up, less of it is demanded, and that rule goes for power, too. Except for local businesses, which are small and depend upon the general economic vitality of Vermont to keep food on the table – and a booming travel industry – bigger businesses can and will move, to places that aren’t apparently out to shutter them. While politicians like Peter “Thanks, I’ll Quit While I’m Barely Ahead” Shumlin tout the state as a “great” place for jobs, the hard smack of reality is that the bulk of job growth is in service jobs, which are not well-known for their high rates of pay.

Electricity is a cost in every economic activity, but especially manufacturing. The price and reliability of electricity are critical factors in the manufacturing business model. Even the Shumlin administration, which had previously worked to not cut IBM a break, finally decided that the rates were an issue in 2014 – well after IBM had already voiced its concerns.

Chris Recchia, commissioner of the Department of Public Service, said the rate freeze was particularly important this year for IBM.

“It is no secret that they are struggling,” Recchia said. “And a rate freeze for them was going be very helpful for additional planning in the coming years.” Though the freeze doesn’t prevent IBM from leaving the state, he said, “I think they would describe it as every little bit helps.”

No kidding. You think so, Chris?

IBM said in testimony to the Public Service Board that electricity rates in New York are much lower than they are in Vermont. And New York has “made an aggressive push” to attract high-tech businesses like GlobalFoundries, the tech company rumored to be considering the purchase of IBM’s Essex plant.

“Competitors in other geographic areas are paying electric rates significantly lower than IBM Vermont’s rates,” said Nathan Fiske, an IBM site energy manager, in prefiled PSB testimony on May 30. “Our competitive disadvantage, as a result of the higher electric costs paid by IBM Vermont, is very substantial.”

Which is one of many many reasons why Fab 2000 is now sited in New York, not Williston, Vermont, providing jobs to New Yorkers instead of Vermonters (not including the Vermonters who moved there to find a new job in the new fab, part of Vermont’s economic exodus).

But now, finally, the state has come clean: It wants a diminished future for Vermonters, mandated from a central planning agency. How this

Not pictured: Chowderheads frantically dialing the power company when the rolling blackouts start. In January.

translates out to Vermonters in the real world, though, might not quite align so nicely with the Vermont Progressive Utopia:

A recurring theme in one of the discussion groups was “One-size-fits-all is a difficult standard to work with,” as Judith Jackson of Irasburg put it.

State Rep. Joseph Troiano, D-Stannard, reiterated as much. He said Stannard has of a population of only about 150 people, with no paved roads and certainly no public transportation. Residents are spread out and they go to work in different directions, so any notion of ride-sharing is pretty much off the table.

Vermont is in the bottom half of states for population density. Add in the fact that for half the calendar year there’s the real possibility of snow and ice factoring into transportation decisions, and you’re not really likely to see someone from Buel’s Gore biking to work in South Burlington, and, well, this “plan” starts to seem irrationally optimistic.

Moving a weak and demographically shaky economy to one that has less predictability in access to electricity, with uncertainty in rates, does not equal a massive influx of speculative capital, in search of Vermont’s next big economic success story. The Ministry of Truth, in the form of the DPS, is doing a painful disservice, again, to the people of Vermont, that it purports to represent.

We work to advance all Vermonters’ quality of life, economy and security through implementation of our statewide energy and telecommunications goals, using sound statewide energy and telecommunications planning, strong public advocacy of the public good, and through strong consumer protection advocacy for individuals.

So which is it? A reduction in the standard of living to adhere to the bureaucracy’s latest 5-year plan, or working to advance all Vermonters’ quality of life?

If the hypocrisy isn’t perfectly clear, let me shine a bright light on the Dome of Mt. Bernie:

In 2014, Bernie and his wife earned a bit over $200,000. In Vermont, that puts them in the 2% category. That’s right, in Bernie’s adopted home state, he’s not quite a 1%-er he’s been railing against for the past several years, but he’s almost there. This New York 2%-er has spent the bulk of his adult life complaining about rich people.

And now he’s one of them, and he’s going to show it, by buying a house in Vermont that real Vermonters can only drive past, knowing that

Burlington College offered its students a study abroad program in the Caribbean, according to tax filings. It reported spending about $47,000 on that program in the tax year beginning in mid-2008.

Around that time, the son of Jonathan Leopold, a Burlington College board member, purchased a small resort in the Bahamas called Andro’s Beach Club and an accompanying hotel, Nathan’s Lodge.

Leopold served with Sanders in the Burlington city government—as mayor, Sanders appointed Leopold city treasurer—before becoming embroiled in scandal involving millions of dollars in payments to a Burlington telecommunications company.

Sen. Sanders has described Leopold as so close a friend as to be considered “family.” He reportedly discouraged Sanders’ socialist impulses early in their careers. Efforts to reach Leopold were unsuccessful.

Shortly after Leopold’s son, also named Jonathan, purchased the resort, Burlington College began writing it large checks for all-inclusive stays for its study abroad students.

None of this is necessarily new news, but it is telling that so many Sanders supporters quite happily endorsed a candidate who’s been telling

them one thing, about how they should live their lives, that there’s too many choices of deodorant on store shelves, that rich people are essentially monsters, taking from the working class. But how he’s lived his life and

provided for himself and his family seems to look, a lot, like how those evil rich people cariacatures he’s demonized all his life live their lives.

Nothing fixes a shortage of food like taking people out of their offices and putting them to work in the field, where they will surely create such a massive spike in productivity that prices will inevitably drop, as more food is grown and harvested more rapidly than before, simply by adding more resources to the same level of work. Even if said resources know absolutely zero about farming, harvesting, transporting, and selling produce of any kind. And might also be hungry.

So, for Venezuela to follow this same historical path just sounds like good science. Unfortunately, this same science is applied in Vermont, on a much smaller scale, with smaller impacts, but the basic premises are the same. Let’s take a look.

1. Single-payer: Price controls for Health Care: As has been called for by some single-payer proponents to make the system “work”, price controls essentially act as a cap on what can be charged for services. This means that either a) once the number of patients has been seen that gobbles up the budget through the cap limit for the year, no more patients can be seen, or b) you can continue to see patients, but they will only be able to offer reduced services in order to stay under the cap for the year. You can model this as a per-capita equation, estimating how many people a particular doctor might see based on historicals, but you are completely guessing as to what the real need will be (a big flu season, bad weather causing more accidents than normal, a flood, etc, would throw the budget into chaos). Odds are good that your variance to that capped budget will exceed the 3.5%-4.0% margin Vermont hospitals generally operate under, annually.

Getting the costs under control will require unprecedented changes in the health care delivery system itself. In the past, ties between elements of the health care system – doctors and hospitals – were limited. They competed with one another to a significant degree and that is still going on.

In the future, they will have to be integrated, tied together, both clinically and financially. The reimbursement system will have to shift from fee-for-service, which is a powerful incentive for overuse, to some sort of per capita financing, rather than financing per medical episode. And the doctors and hospitals will have to take “risk”; they will have to set a price for caring for a group of patients, and if they exceed it, the overage will come out of their pockets.

Right. And if the overage is more than what goes into their pockets, the practice shuts down – or at best, it starts rationing care in one form or

Is this where the line starts for free college?

another. Or the doctor and staff start receiving salary cuts. Even though some of Davis’s arguments are logical, they fail, utterly, when compared as easily as he does to other industries. A car mechanic can turn away anyone he or she doesn’t want to work for; a hospital has to take care of the sick immediately, with the financing done later. That will mean the hospital will have a mix of payers, and some cover the costs, and some don’t. A cap on what you can spend per patient creates the incentives to do just what cost controls aren’t supposed to do – reduce the amount of care available. Davis actually states that the doctors will have to set a price – which you have to do either in the market, or in a government-mandated controls situation. Why is one OK but the other isn’t? Why would the inevitable reduction in the amount of care available be seen as a benefit?

Oh, and as for examples of price controls not working? See how Medicare and Medicaid’s reimbursements have been keeping up with actual costs. How’s that working out?

The Seed Law seeks to consolidate national food sovereignty, regulate the production of hybrid seed, and rejects the production, distribution and import of GMO seeds, according to GMWatch. The law will also ban transgenic seed research.

The law will establish the National Seed System, a central body that will implement the new law. The group will monitor and sanction any agricultural violations, with a focus on the protection of traditional seeds, teleSUR reported.

The legislation, which comes after years of collective grassroots efforts, was promptly signed by Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.

“Approval of the Seed Law was pending since last year after being proposed through a national dialogue process in 2013,” teleSUR reported. “Public consultations have sought popular input on the law, and campesinos [farmers] and environmental advocates have

Clear evidence that nationalization of industries works just fine, thank you.

History has no shortage of despots in one form or another banning the private ownership of guns, which obviously makes it easier to control your less-than-thrilled-with-you citizens. But it clearly sends a signal to Venezuelans that they’re subjects, not citizens, and the choices are being made for them, to them, instead of the people making their own choices for themselves.

Which is what markets, and ultimately freedom, are about. The more choices are removed, the less free you are.

Looks like Vermont and Venezuela have a lot more in common than I might have thought.

Why would anyone want to put up with this insanity? As Great Britain demonstrated, if a free people choose to exercise their own power, they will decide not to put up with said insanity.

Vermont’s example shows, however, that it takes more than talk to change a few decades of EU-esque progressivism’s slow but determined encroachment into the decision-making space of every citizen. The encroachment never happens in one swift stroke. Incrementalism is the key, and as more layers of bureaucratic power and spending are added, annually, the new norm is established. The next year’s barnacles are built on the prior year’s established barnacles.

A few of these barnacled examples from Vermont:

Act 250: What was started as a way to manage growth in Vermont, and to apply a common set of guiding principles and rules has devolved, utterly, into a chokehold on economic growth. A dilapidated example of which is evident to anyone getting on Interstate 189 off Shelburne Road, in Burlington, where they can see the Vermont’s largest accidentally-funded skatepark, which started construction in 1988, and only last year was the final hurdle cleared in allowing construction to continue.

The Attorney General’s office says that the Bove’s company sold several types of jarred pasta sauces and other products under the “Bove’s of Vermont” label. But the tomatoes were from California and some of the sauce was made in New York. State law prohibits companies from using the word “Vermont” to market products made outside of the state.

Granted, there is a concern about something being labeled inaccurately, but where is the line drawn? Does the glass for the jars need to be made in Vermont, too? The manufacturing tools used at the manufacturing facility – are those made in Vermont? The jar lids? The labels? The oregano? Modern manufacturing is a worldwide supply chain equation, and the state has no knowledge of, nor expertise in, any one single product, much less everything made in Vermont.

As an example, the state regulates wood. Well, thank God that that issue has been figured out. I was concerned that Christmas trees would be mislabeled, and angry Christmas shoppers would riot when this duplicity was discovered.

EB-5:Long a darling of the Shumlin administration, the EB-5 program was designed to attract foreign investment in Vermont capital projects, of which there is something of a shortage. Like water in a desert, Vermont needed a federal program to let dollars rain down on its citizens, because without Progressive leadership to fix Vermonters’ problems for them, where would they be?

Well, they wouldn’t be investigated by the SEC for fraud, for one thing. But hey, what’s a few hundred million in loans floated around in what seems to be a Ponzi-like effort to leverage investor dollars in every place but the capital project itself? As others have noted, when campaign contributions come from people benefiting from public dollars, even a thin veneer of deniability shatters upon closer inspection:

Wait. You did *what* with the money?

The current circumstances at Q Burke and Jay Peak are a blow for the entire state of Vermont. Economic development in communities which have been historically neglected is absolutely essential to the financial vitality of our state. The fact that the EB-5 funding scandal is the product of, in this case, a handful of angel funders who have little connection to Vermont speaks loudly to the desperation of public officials who wanted to believe that the primary developers of these projects, Ariel Quiros and Bill Stenger, were white knights. They weren’t.

Many will point to the fact that the alleged fraud in this case was eventually uncovered and point to the hard-working forensic accounting specialists who largely go unheralded as evidence that our system of oversight worked. To the extent that these alleged white collar crooks dipped into the public till and enriched themselves at the expense of all Vermonters that is in fact true. But, we should have never, EVER gotten to this point.

Campaign contributions showered the state Democratic party and its leaders, most notably Gov. Peter Shumlin and Sen. Patrick Leahy. Quiros and Stenger did not make those contributions out of the goodness of their hearts. They expected something in return for those campaign monies. While unseemly, under our system that kind of relationship between elected officials and supporters looking to gain or sustain influence is not illegal.

phrase, though, Peter keeps the Progressive dream alive, by using phrasings like “Vermont’s not ready yet”, as if there’s an as-yet untapped pile of Vermonter-hidden gold in the $2.6 billion dollar range that’s just lying around, ready to be used for single-payer.

Instead, Shumlin hid his financing “plan” until after an election. Why? Because that’s just good science, Vermonters!

The governor kept the development of his financing plan under wraps for several years and had come under increasing pressure to include members of the public in the process. He waited, however, until after the election to make his move. The delay may have cost him voter support as he narrowly defeated an relatively unknown Republican challenger, Scott Milne, by only 2,434 votes in November.

The reality was that the Progressive dream Peter touted was not even remotely possible, under any set of financial circumstances, yet Shumlin rode the wave of its popularity to successive elections until even he could no longer hide from facts, or hide the facts from the public.

“We obviously wish that the numbers were different. It’s a huge disappointment for me, it’s the biggest disappointment of my public service so far, but we’ll make progress by pushing forward in other ways,” Shumlin said.

What should be disappointing to Vermonters is how he spent millions of taxpayer dollars on a vehicle to national office, yet Vermont was still stuck with him.

Now it’s easy to complain, so what’s the cure for Vermont’s ills? Is there a federal grant program that could be tapped to repair what might have become an irreparably broken Vermont, after decades of abuse?

Or, instead, can Vermonters figure this out on their own? Here’s a few suggestions that might help the state change course:

Cut taxes: Match other states that have similar population size, demographics, geographics, etc. New Hampshire comes to mind here. It turns out that their aggregate rate of state and local taxes (as of 2011) ranks them 44th (at 8%), and Vermont 9th (at 10.5%). Here’s an idea: If people have more of their own money to spend on goods and services, aggregate demand goes up. The economy grows. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Encourage business: The costs of business can be broken down into some simple cost drivers: Labor, materials, and energy. What did Vermont do for its businesses in those categories?

c. Increased the cost of gas by raising taxes on it, a cost which every business uses in one way or another, and Vermonters use to drive to work and to drive to places where they might, oh, buy wood. This cost is passed on to the buyer at every level of a business’s operations, for everything they purchase.

Cut Taxes: Did I mention cutting taxes? Vermont is ranked 49th for economic outlook, which, unless I’m doing my math wrong here, means Vermont is near to reaching Progressive nirvana, by being next to the best at being worst:

Only New York is worse than Vermont when it comes to tax and regulatory policies that foster economic growth, according to a new report on economic competitiveness between states.

According to the eighth annual Rich States, Poor States, Vermont is 49th out of 50 states on economic outlook due to the state’s ratings on 15 different variables, including tax rates, labor policies and overall regulatory burden.

Oh, and cut taxes.

Finally, there’s a broader, more philosophical argument to make, one that aligns with what used to be something of a political signature for Vermont, the town meeting. The idea of subsidiarity, essentially meaning a de-centralization of political control, kicks all the way back to de Tocqueville, but is anathema to today’s Progressivism.

Alexis de Tocqueville‘s classic study, Democracy in America, may be viewed as an examination of the operation of the principle of subsidiarity in early 19th century America. De Tocqueville noted that the French Revolution began with “a push towards decentralization… in the end, an extension of centralization.”[1] He wrote that “Decentralization has, not only an administrative value, but also a civic dimension, since it increases the opportunities for citizens to take interest in public affairs; it makes them get accustomed to using freedom. And from the accumulation of these local, active, persnickety freedoms, is born the most efficient counterweight against the claims of the central government, even if it were supported by an impersonal, collective will.”[2]

Virtually nowhere in the Progressive agenda do you find calls for a reduction in power, or control. Every Progressive item in Vermont, and at the national level, is to either take control of decision-making from the citizens, or to reduce their Constitutionally-based rights, if it furthers

Town Meeting in Charlotte, Vermont. Not in Washington, DC.

the Progressive agenda, and garners more votes, which equates to an even further increase in control.

The idea that others represent us politically becomes less and less realistic the further away from us they get, both physically and philosophically. Ideally, however, the opposite should be true:

The laws you live under should be made by the people you live with.

Progressivism, in its most modern sense, is a champion of centralized control. Great Britain has learned that lesson. As Churchill once said, the US will be sure to do the right thing, eventually, after we’ve exhausted all the other possibilities.

“This is a true David and Goliath story, a small state fighting big food, big agriculture, big business and big money in Washington,” Gov. Peter Shumlin said.

No mention from Peter about how instituting single-payer in Vermont bends the state over (backwards, mostly) in terms of bowing to big business and big money in Washington. But let’s get to food!

All food is genetically modified. Corn, wheat, soybeans, you name it, have all been bred for centuries so the most desirable traits in the product are prevalent.

The state does not address meat or dairy, because, obviously, the dairy industry has a healthy interest in modifications made to cows so they can produce more milk. I guess some GMOs are more equal than others, in the political science realm.

Ian Godwin, University of Queensland Professor in Plant Molecular Genetics, told Coach that a lot of the opposition to GMO foods stems from the fact big American multinational companies were some of the first to start using them.

“Part of it is an ideological thing against large multinationals, which was aided and abetted by the European Union because it seemed US seed companies were going to take over the seed industry in Europe,” he explains.

Secondly, the fact that organic certifying organisations refuse to certify GM products organic, has contributed to the belief that GM foods are less healthy or good for the environment.

“I have argued that [organic certification] shouldn’t just accept it or reject it –look at it on a case-by-case basis,” Professor Godwin says.

“If there is one that will allow us to not use [pesticides or insecticides] to control fungal diseases on tomatoes and potatoes, environmentally that might be a good thing.”

Australian Organic argues that there is not enough understood about GMOs and, “with many safe and proven forms of farming already available, the organic farmer believes it is important to allow Mother Nature to provide us food the way nature intended”.

But Professor Godwin counters that our current food supply is a far cry from how Mother Nature originally designed it.

“We have to recognise that agriculture is not natural,” he points out.

“We are taking one species and trying to make that the only species that grows on a hundred hectares of land. That doesn’t occur in nature.”

Professor Godwin says that apples naturally would be bitter and the size of cherries, while maize grasses were carefully selected by humans to find ones with more seeds to produce more yield.

“Wild maize has maybe 20 seeds in each cob but through domestication we selected bigger cobs that have 800 seeds,” he points out.

“We have done a lot with domestication of plants to make them unable to survive in nature.”

But what’s the short-term impact of the labeling requirement in Vermont? Food taken off shelves by grocers, that know they are not in compliance with Vermont law.

Price Chopper, one of Vermont’s leading chains, announced Friday that it would no longer sell about 3,000 products manufactured by companies which refuse to put the Vermont label on their product.

So, when the average Vermonter goes to buy groceries, what they can choose to purchase is reduced, meaning someone else is making their

The best summary statistic we have to describe a state or nation’s economy is gross domestic product, the total dollar value of all goods and services produced within its borders. Vermont’s GDP — $30.4 billion in 2015 — pales in comparison to the U.S. total of $17,800 billion. That’s usually referenced as $17.8 trillion, but it’s hard enough for me to conceptualize a billion dollars, much less a trillion, and comparing Vermont’s GDP to the nation is best done using the same units of measure. We could also say that Vermont’s GDP is $0.0304 trillion, but that’s even harder to conceptualize. At any rate, Vermont’s GDP is the smallest of any state in the nation, below even Wyoming, the only state with fewer people than Vermont. At the other end of the list, California leads the nation with a GDP of $2.5 trillion.

But worse, even when comparing a barely anemic growth rate in GDP in Vermont to New Hampshire’s more robust rate, there is much more compelling economic evidence that the state is trending downward. In a very critical category: Income.

GDP goes up in both states, but incomes go down in Vermont. Shocking.

Vermont’s median household income has never been higher than New Hampshire’s, at least going as far back as 2000 (earliest year of the FRED data). New Hampshire’s population is roughly twice that of Vermont’s, but on the median household income basis, that population factor is accounted for.

Worse, the trend in Vermont is increasing spending and employee hiring in the public sector, while NH has been trimming the number of employees in the public sector. Vermont’s answer to stagnation is to hire more employees; New Hampshire’s seems to be the opposite.

One of these trends is not like the other.

In fact, between the peak of government employees for both states in the January 2010 timeframe (above), until January 2016, here’s how NH and VT compare:

Like this:

Nothing succeeds like success! Or, it does if you’re Annie Noonan, the Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Labor, and your job is to cheerlead mediocrity. Since Vermont has such a low unemployment number, even when bad weather (from the ski industry’s point of view) makes for fewer of those high-paying seasonal service jobs, Annie’s here to tell that there’s a silver lining to the unemployment cloud:

January 26, 2016: “The lack of snow directly impacted the number of jobs in Vermont in December. People who had been hired by employers in the leisure and hospitality sector were laid off when the snow didn’t arrive as expected, and ski lifts were idled, hotel rooms weren’t booked, and restaurants weren’t serving the winter-season visitors. As such, the December employment data had notable employment loss; fortunately, the situation is turning around, and many of those laid off workers are now back to work. Vermont employers are still hiring, and job training programs and internships are available for many Vermonters. The Department of Labor encourages anyone looking for work or a career change to visit one of our 12 regional career centers.”

Well. Vermont employers are still hiring. Great news! So what kind of jobs are they hiring for? Before answering that question, let’s look at Vermont’s 2015 economic performance from an employee point of view. Meaning someone who’s actively looking for work:

Hey, unemployment’s lower! But, um, so are the employed. Oh.

Hm. The Total column represents Vermont’s burgeoning labor force. So there’s roughly 5,000 fewer people actively seeking employment in Vermont in December 2015 than there was in January 2015.

As the unemployment column shows, about 5,000 fewer people were unemployed in December 2015 than there were in January 2015. So how can the unemployment number drop from 4.6% to 3.1% in 12 months, if those two numbers are the same?

Answer: Because the overall employment number is almost exactly the same. 330,000 people were employed in January 2015, and 330,000 people were employed in December 2015. Net new employment is all of 100 people.

What industries were able to reap this whirlwind harvest of jobs? What businesses could absorb this upwelling of employment? Well, government, mostly, and health care & social assistance. In other words, taxpayer-supported jobs, not private-sector jobs, the jobs that provide the tax revenues to support the public sector.

MONTPELIER – February 3, 2016 – Gov. Peter Shumlin stood with Vermont business and education leaders today who support his call for Vermont to use divestment as a tool to help combat global warming. The Governor made the call in his State of the State address earlier this year for Vermont to follow California’s lead in divesting state pension funds from coal assets. The Governor also urged that the state go further and divest from ExxonMobil assets.

The first consensus revenue forecast Shumlin saw as governor in January 2011 predicted that general fund revenues would grow by close to 6 percent in the following two years. In general, forecasts have fallen since then.

This was catastrophically bad financial planning, and only a fool would assume doubled growth rates based on no reason whatsoever.

Which leaves me one question: I wonder if Shumlin will have another 100 jobs to take credit for in 11 months, on his way out the door?